While intending to exalt himself through his important sources, a daily grind, he trips over his own ignorance through his haste to regurgitate what he’s been told.

“You know why they hate us? I talked to intelligence people all weekend. They hate us because of their religion, they hate us because of their culture, and they hate us because of peer pressure. … They know what they’re doing. … One intelligence person told me, if you scratch the surface, and if you gave every street vendor to prime minister in that region a chance to throw a rock at the U.S. embassy, they would.” – Joe Scarborough

Mika Brzezinski didn’t say a word and no one else on the set, not John Heilemann or Mark Halperin, dared to rebut the star. He never takes it well when you do. Brzezinski simply segued to the continued killings in Afghanistan. It beat staring at Scarborough like a potted plant.

CLINTON: We must be clear-eyed even in our grief. This was an attack by a small and savage group, not the people or government of Libya. Everywhere Chris and his team went in Libya, in a country scared by war and tyranny, they were hailed as friends and partners. And when the attack came yesterday, Libyans stood and fought to defend our post. Some were wounded. Some Libyans carried Chris’s body to the hospital and they helped rescue and lead other Americans to safety. Last night when I spoke with the President of Libya, he strongly condemned the violence and pledged every effort to protect our people and pursue those responsible. The friendship between our countries borne out of shared struggle will not be another casualty of this attack. A free and stable Libya is still in America’s interest and security. And we will not turn our back on that.

Libyans died helping the Americans at the Benghazi consulate. Religious extremists that attacked the consulate were “savage,” to use Clinton’s word, which Scarborough co-opted and exploded. The extremists shown on TV, even by Richard Engel’s description in Egypt, were mostly young, with business as usual during the daytime, the night where danger hides still. But it’s not like Egypt has a history of democratic elections.

For some reason infotainment pundits, led by Bill O’Reilly and Joe Scarborough, joined by right-wing TV and radio hosts, seem to believe the Arab Spring was going to mean an immediate, painless, effortless shift to happy, peppy democracy.

The convulsive birth of America should have taught everyone otherwise. But this is a region where dictators, supported by the west, kept their people in bondage for centuries, longer than America’s been alive. Breaking out was never going to be pretty. Does that mean the Arab Spring is a failure? Compared to what, bottled dictatorships? Only if you believe freedom from enslavement comes only through western means and on our terms.

The discussion led by Joe Scarborough’s opening rant is part of the problem, which can be seen through Bill O’Reilly as well, whose coverage on the Libya commando raid has done a huge disservice to his audience and the importance of this discussion itself. But this is what people listen to and learn from, the most popular show on cable, “The O’Reilly Factor,” which has been a horror show since the Benghazi raid.

Joe Scarborough should quit talking to “intelligence people” and try to find intelligent people. Unfortunately, that ship sailed a long time ago for him and the other infotainment hosts, most of whom rely on ideology to be their guide. When you’re opining about the Muslim and Arab world it’s a recipe for the death of truth.

I teach at an Orthodox Jewish school in which MANY of my coworkers were just fine with the Muslims of the Middle East living under oppressive dictatorships, with torture and dungeons and vanishings and mock trials and executions and all the rest that comes with the package, as long as it meant that Israel was relatively safe. Now they are very upset with the idea of Democracy coming to those countries.

By the way, a LOT of these coworkers are children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, refugees, etc. In other words, they have no reason to have anything but undying love for Democracy and hate for Dictatorship. Except when….well, you know.

Lake Lady
September 17, 2012 at 12:25 pm

Thanks Taylor~ Joe was disgraceful and the others were cowards,thanks for catching the moment. Mica has so sold out to the infotainment industry, I don’t know how she can go to family dinners.

One thing I will say about Mika’s role is that she’s not there to confront the star, which is Joe Scarborough. One thing you learn is where you are in the food chain of the TV show you are on.

If MB ruins JS’s brand by outing him for what he is the facade on which the entire show & the financial enterprise that MSNBC depends on will collapse.

Joe’s reaction to people who catch him in his bs is to go nuclear (that I’ve reported first hand) is death to morning infotainment TV, which we’ve seen before. Now they actually keep him off the air when it might happen. Mika interviewed Kurt Eichenwald over his damning intel story on 9/11 & Bush errors, while the entire panel disgraced themselves for the sake of balance when Eichenwald was reporting what he’d learned.

I can’t describe what Mika is there to do without engaging in rather disgusting imagery which could probably be taken as more than a little sexist. Let’s just say you are right- she’s not there to confront Joe. She’s there to massage certain portions of his anatomy, pick lint off his shoulder, and introduce the next guest, assuming Joe gives her the green light to do so.

More DC “conventional wisdom” at work. Scarborough is still a politician, and this is how politicians view protesters. Freedom is messy sometimes. Sometimes it allows people to make fun of other peoples’ religions, and then those other people get upset about it to a degree one wouldn’t think possible.

As things stand now, the American deaths in this affair are being blamed on a terrorist organization whose origins are in the West’s interference in the area, and its support of dictators in its own interests. It would be nice if folks like Scarborough could keep that in mind, but that’s a rather troubling thought for a politician. It means he’d have to talk about part of this being our fault, not just about how awful all those other people are.

I heard this this morning and hoped it would be a thread here, and this is the first chance I’ve had to come online. I could not believe that MSNBC continues to sponsor someone who would rant “they hate us because they hate us,” “commentary” much more suited to Fox “News” than a station which is constantly telling us to “Lean Forward.”

Maybe it’s time for MSNBC to do a little leaning forward – lean forward, pull back a leg, and give this sorry jackass a well-deserved kick to the curb. Because until that happens, it’s really hard to take this network seriously.

“They hate us because they hate us….the rest is just excuses…” So….they are irrational, insane people who hate for no reason, and we are 100 percent innocent bystanders, Joe? Right? Hell, even someone on Kilmeade the other day suggested that “tossing cruise missiles around the Middle East might create enemies” (sure, he “forgot” to mention that little Afghanistan-Iraq adventure Bush launched us on, but it was STILL more honest than Scarborough’s content-free rubbish.)